June 9, 1846: The cannon on Sand Hill in Concord booms the news that John Parker Hale of Dover, an anti-slavery leader, has been elected to the U.S. Senate.
June 10, 2003: In their season opener, Concord’s Quarry Dogs eke out a 3-2 win over the Sanford Mainers at Doane Diamond.
June 10, 2001: Merrimack Valley wins the Class I softball championship with a 4-1 victory over Monadnock. It’s the school’s first softball title since 1987.
June 11, 2001: People passing by the federal courthouse in Concord share their reactions to the early morning execution of Timothy McVeigh. Their overwhelming sentiment: Good riddance.
June 11, 1875: The widow of John A. Winslow, captain of the USS Kearsarge of Civil War fame, climbs Mount Kearsarge to select a granite boulder to adorn her husband’s grave. The people of Warner help her move the stone to the railroad station for the trip to a Boston cemetery.
June 11, 1995: President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich meet in Claremont. They shake hands and promise to work together to bring about real campaign finance reform.
June 12, 1886: The Daniel Webster statue is dedicated in front of the State House.
June 12, 1800: The federal government buys its first naval yard, an island in the Piscataqua River off Portsmouth. It pays a private citizen, William Dennett Jr., $5,500 for the land. The bill of sale is filed in York County, Maine. The deed is filed in Rockingham County, N.H.
June 13, 1920: James Cleveland is born. He will serve as Second District congressman from 1963 to 1981 after practicing law in Concord and New London and serving 12 years in the state Senate.
June 13, 1954: This is Freedom Day in New Hampshire, so declared by Gov. Hugh Gregg as a day of remembrance and prayer for those who have died resisting the Communist regime in Eastern Europe.
June 13, 1957: President Dwight D. Eisenhower appoints James M. Langley, editor and publisher of the Concord Daily Monitor, to be U.S. ambassador to Pakistan. Langley will hold the job for just over two years.
June 13, 1833: With several of his pupils, Samuel Gridley Howe, a Boston surgeon renowned for his work with the blind, demonstrates his techniques at New Hampshire’s Representatives Hall. “The books used for the blind were exhibited, and the blind read from them with considerable facility,” one observer in the large crowd will write.
June 14, 1831: Benjamin Brown French, a rising politico from Chester, goes to a party in Concord with future U.S. senator Charles G. Atherton and future president Franklin Pierce. His companions, both in their 20s, are ” ‘smashed’ by a pair of bright eyes, & a beautiful face,” but French “would as soon think of falling in love with an elegant piece of statuary.” He tells his diary: “Give me eyes that can pierce the very soul, & a countenance that bespeaks a mind within.”
June 14, 1962: Astronaut Alan Shepard of Derry is in Concord for the unveiling of his portrait at the State House. After a week of speeches and banquets, he says, he is glad the picture shows him in a space suit so people will know that “at least once in a while I do work.”
June 15, 2000: Concord Police Chief Bill Halacy submits his resignation, just two years after taking over the department. “The position is so totally consuming,” he says. “I’m feeling like I’m missing out on a lot of the rest of my life.”
June 15, 1981: New Hampshire’s Republican Sen. Warren Rudman purposely passes up a GOP fund-raising dinner in New York because former president Richard Nixon is one of the invited guests. George Clark, a New York Republican leader, sniffs at the snub, asking: “Who’s Rudman?”
June 15, 1946: When Nashua Dodgers Manager Walter Alston is kicked out of the game for arguing with an umpire, Roy Campanella takes over for the day, becoming the first African American to manage an integrated team. Don Newcombe’s late two-run homer ties the game, and Nashua wins in extra innings.
June 15, 1776: Three men, including Concord’s Timothy Walker Jr., write a resolution instructing Dr. Josiah Bartlett and William Whipple, New Hampshire’s delegates in Philadelphia, to join “in declaring the 13 united colonies a free and independent state.” New Hampshire will support such a declaration “with our lives and fortunes,” the resolution says.
